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For millions of Americans, the end of the year is a time to track down a scarf at the back of a closet, wolf down Christmas cookies, and catch up with family and friends at parties and gatherings. For some of the nation’s largest employers, it’s also seemingly a time to clean house.
This year, thousands of workers are being laid off during the holiday season, especially in industries like media, tech, and finance. Big-name companies such as Ernst & Young, Hasbro, and Spotify have announced layoffs in recent weeks. And if you scroll through your LinkedIn feed, you’ll likely see posts from many people discussing a recent layoff.
While a layoff at any time of the year is difficult for workers to absorb, it can be particularly tough during the holidays, when budgets are often stretched thin and job hunting can feel like a fool’s errand. So why do companies seem to use the holiday season to cull their workforce?
Well—maybe they don’t.
Despite the sense that more companies conduct layoffs in December, experts, as well as the data, don’t necessarily show it to be true.
Career consulting firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas, Inc. has tracked layoffs across companies for years by surveying its network of customers, partners, and professional contacts, which spans over 300 companies of up to 50,000+ employees, across 30 industries and all regions of the United States. Data supplied to Fast Company from the firm shows that between 1993 and 2012, January was the month that saw the most layoffs. And since then, April and May tend to be the most popular months for layoffs, with April seeing a monthly average of more than 100,000 layoffs between 2013 and 2023.
For comparison, December’s monthly average for the past 10 years is less than 37,000. And notably, the data also shows that this past November, employers in the U.S. cut roughly 45,500 jobs, which was actually a 41% decrease from the same month a year prior.
With that, it seems that companies who may have traditionally used December to make fiscal year-end moves have changed things up. And even if it feels like this year is particularly nasty for layoffs, experts say that’s not the case, either.
“If you look at some of the government data on layoffs, there are some years where it looks like things pick up at the end of the year,” says Nick Bunker, the director of economic research at Indeed. “But what you can see in the statistics is that not only are layoffs not picking up, but the layoff rate is actually very low by historical standards.” The latest Job Openings and Labor Turnover (JOLTS) report from the Labor Department, which analyzes data from October, showed that there were 1.6 million layoffs and discharges for the month—relatively unchanged from a year prior.
As the data doesn’t show an uptick in December layoffs, the question remains as to why many people still might think that many employers are thinning the ranks before the new year. According to Bunker, a lot of it has to do with specific companies making changes, rather than large-scale trends.
“What’s happening is that the companies that are laying people off right now are fairly prominent—they grab headlines for anything they do,” he says, citing numerous companies in the media and tech sector. “So, if they’re letting people go, that gets more attention.”
Still, the economy is strong, Bunker says. And the layoffs we are likely to hear about are often more seasonal and industry-specific. We shouldn’t be surprised to hear about retail layoffs in January, he says, or if similar seasonal trends take hold.
But overall, there simply don’t seem to be more layoffs occurring in December than in other months of the year—at least in recent years. Instead, companies likely just make staffing changes when they feel like those changes are warranted.
And don’t let all those recent headlines about mass layoffs in certain industries worry you: They may simply be attention-grabbing headlines, rather than an indicator of economic weakness.
“Tech, finance, and media—they make up a bigger share of the headlines than the share of the workforce,” Bunker says.
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